Once at a safe distance, the doctor explained, “The rat—”
“Ratel. Or just honey badger.”
“—is right. Everything is looking good. I just want to examine your wound. Then you should be able to go home.” She glanced over at Tock. “I’m pretty sure you’re ready to go, too.”
“You’re sending me home? Do you even know what they shot me up with?”
“No. But I’m so sorry the original poison didn’t work.”
Tock hissed again, but Shay’s pleas stopped her from tearing the rude bitch’s face off.
“Ladies, please,” Shay begged. “I just want to go home.”
The She-lion nodded and walked over to a sink in the corner of the room. She sanitized her hands, put on nitrile gloves, and went to Shay’s side. She carefully removed the bandage over his wound and took care to closely examine the damage.
Tock really hoped there was nothing wrong. She hated that she’d accidentally hurt him while he was trying to help.
She also felt bad he’d had to deal with her family. She didn’t even ask her teammates to do that. No one should have to deal with either side of her family. They were all a little bit insane and Tock didn’t think it was fair that anyone else should have to put up with the crazy. She was born into it, but her teammates had enough to deal with on their own. She never wanted to add to their stress by adding her relatives.
She’d already told Mads and the others that if something happened and she was killed during something they were doing—but shouldn’t be doing—she wasn’t to tell anyone but her parents until she was buried.
“Trust me,” she told Mads and Max another day when they were only sixteen, “it will be better for all of us in the long run.”
“How will it be better for you?” Max had asked. “You’ll already be dead.”
“That doesn’t mean my grandmother can’t still get to me. And, oy . . . the guilt that woman will pour down on my head.”
“Okay, this looks great,” the rude doctor announced. “A nurse will come in to help with your discharge. Your brothers are here.”
“They are?”
“Been here all night. They’re wonderfully unpleasant.”
Shay nodded. “Yeah. They are.”
“What about me?” Tock asked.
“What about you?”
“Bitch, I will cut your—”
“Discharge,” Shay quickly cut in before Tock could finish her threat. “Can she be discharged, too?”
“I’ll send your doctor in to move that process along as quickly as possible. We’d like to get all of you out of here.”
“All of us?” Tock asked.
“All those badgers are here, too.”
“Still? They’re still here?”
A slow smile spread across the She-lion’s face, and Tock wanted to smash her head in!
“They are here,” she said, her smile getting wider. “Why don’t I go get them?”
Before Tock could stop her, the bitch walked out the door.
Tock ran across the room and jumped on Shay’s hospital bed.
“What are you doing?” he wanted to know.
“Getting out of here.”
“Tock, you have to be discharged.”
She heard him, but ignored his words and, instead, climbed on his shoulders.
“Hey!”
She ignored that too, reaching up and pushing at the tile above her head. She was having trouble pushing it out of the way, so she unleashed her claws and slammed them through the neighboring tile. Holding on with her claws, she lifted her legs and kicked in the tile next to it. She planted her feet on either side of the opening and retracted her claws. Using the strength of her legs, she stayed in position until she could bring her torso up and crouch inside the air duct.
Once she was securely inside, she leaned down and told Shay, “Meet me outside in ten minutes.” After that, she scampered off and didn’t look back.
*
Shay was still staring up at the empty hole in the ceiling when his brothers walked into the room.
“Hey!” Finn greeted him. “You’re up.”
“Way up,” Keane muttered.
Recognizing that tone, Shay immediately looked at his lap and realized the pillow was no longer covering his junk.
“Shit,” he barked, covering himself again.
“You just had artery surgery. Why do you have a hard-on?”
“Maybe he has a morning hard-on,” Finn reasoned. “I love a good morning hard-on.”
“Can we stop talking about my hard-on?” Shay pleaded.
Keane pointed. “Why’s the tile on the floor?”
“Long story.”
“Where’s Tock?” Finn asked.
Shay and his brothers looked up at the hole in the ceiling, and Keane said, “That explains the hard-on.”
Before Shay could tell his brother to shut up, the door opened again and Tock’s family came into the room.
All of them. All of them came into the room.
“Where is she?” Tock’s grandmother asked.
Shay grimaced. How do you tell an entire family that the person they’d been waiting for all night had run out on them?
You don’t. You don’t tell them anything. Instead, he simply looked up at the ceiling and all the badgers followed suit.
“Huh,” one of her cousins said, still staring at the opening. “Well, that’s rude.”
But Tock’s grandmother only chuckled. “That girl. She is just like her mother, which is probably why I want to punch her in the neck right now.”
And there it was for Shay to finally see: the family resemblance between Tock and her grandmother.
Chapter 6
Shay and his two brothers got into the SUV Keane had rented at the airport. He thought the badgers would be driving with them, but they’d opted to rent their own car, which Finn seemed glad about. “Max always drives, and she drives like a suicide bomber.”
Shay stretched out in the backseat. Although “stretched out” wasn’t exactly correct. The SUV was of average size. Fine for most people but not for a Malone brother. He had to bend his knees, and his back rested against the left-side passenger door.
He was glad to be out of the hospital, though. Glad he was okay. Now he could just relax until he got home.
Closing his eyes, Shay easily fell asleep but snapped awake when he heard his eldest brother growl, “What the unholy fuck . . . ?”
Shay sat up and looked around. “What? What’s wrong?”
Keane still drove, their vehicle now on a two-lane road. He was going pretty fast, but Keane always drove fast. Shay didn’t see anything in their way. So he wasn’t sure what his brother was complaining—
Another vehicle sped up behind them, trying to pass. The entire crew of honey badgers occupied the passing SUV—except for Tock. Tock wasn’t inside the SUV. She was on the outside. Climbing up the front grill while they raced along whatever road this was.
Horrified, the three brothers watched Tock—now in a hospital gown, which seemed a waste because it wasn’t tied so most of her naked body was exposed to the world as the material flapped wildly in the wind—make her way up to the hood. Once there, she paused to catch her breath, then started moving on all fours toward the front windscreen.